by Isaac Hooke
“I’m detecting gamma ray transmissions from the Elk ships,” Lewis said. “Directed toward the Elder.”
“Issuing they’re surrender and offering their undying support, no doubt,” Robert said.
“Should we shoot them down?” Miko asked.
“Negative,” Jonathan said. “Let them go. But if they had fired on us before departing, you can bet that none of them would be alive right now.”
A few minutes later Lewis said: “The Elder ship is firing its particle, err... nanobot beam at the turncoats in succession.”
“Shows the Elder’s appreciation, doesn’t it?” Robert commented.
“It does,” Jonathan said. “And hopefully that will discourage any other Raakarr from doing likewise.”
In a few moments, the five Raakarr had become new scavengers, and decelerated to join the others in Earth’s orbit.
“Lazur, did we detect any communication signals from the Earth at any point while we passed overhead?” Jonathan asked his comm officer.
“I detected a few weak signals at our closest point of the flyby, yes,” Lazur said. “None of them strong enough to penetrate the interference.”
“Ops, I’m assuming the CDC was able to get a good reading on the surface?” Jonathan asked. “How did it look down there?”
“All the major population centers are intact,” Lewis said. “At least those located on the hemisphere we crossed over. The surface-to-space defenses are completely destroyed, however. There was also an unusual amount of nuclear fallout scattered across the continents.”
“Looks like the people of Earth already tried to nuke the Elder before we arrived,” Robert said.
The fleet continued on course, and began to pass the moon by a moderately wide vector. As they crossed over Shackleton Crater on the south pole at a distance of one hundred thousand kilometers, Lewis spoke.
“The Shackleton colony is coming into view,” the ensign said. “It’s completely ruined.”
The colony wasn’t the only thing that was ruined. As the battle group continued forward, more of the moon’s far side was revealed, including the debris of local orbital defense platforms and starships. Jonathan piped in the feed from the external starboard camera. Metallic fragments and slag from ripped-apart destroyers littered the surface of the moon. In orbit, several floating vessels were cut clean in half: dark, hollow carcasses with cutaway views that allowed him to see the individual decks stacked one atop the other like some giant model. But these were no models: valiant men and women had sacrificed themselves in their attempt to save Earth. They had given their lives in vain.
Though worried about an ambush, Jonathan had also secretly clung to a faint hope of finding a last United Systems fleet hidden behind the moon, amassing for one final strike, but as the wreckages continued to emerge, he realized that such fantasies were reserved for books and virtual reality. Real life was vastly different.
The battle group led by Jonathan was all that remained. Humanity’s last hope was in his hands.
Though he had power over every ship in the fleet, he felt more isolated, more alone, than ever before, knowing that every decision he made would affect not only the lives of his crew and fleet, but all of humanity itself.
The burden seemed almost too much to bear.
When it became apparent that there was indeed no threat lying in wait, Jonathan said: “Miko, another course change. Take the fleet behind the moon. Keep us well away from the debris. Lazur, send a general broadcast message to any lifepods that managed to get away out there. Tell the survivors to rendezvous with the fleet on the far side of the moon.”
The course vectors once more updated, and Jonathan watched the vessels slowly move into place.
When the Earth was completely eclipsed behind its natural satellite, Jonathan ordered a full stop fleet-wide.
“Launch telemetry drones to both poles of the moon,” Jonathan said. “I don’t want the Elder or their scavengers to blindside us while we decide what to do next.”
“Launching telemetry drones,” Lewis said.
Feeling the burden of command, Jonathan stood. “I’ll be in my office,” he said. “I need to think for a while. You have the conn, Commander. Update me if anything changes.”
He had only just seated himself when Robert called him.
“Sorry to disturb you, Captain,” Robert said. “But Lieutenant Lazur tells me our repeater drones have finally established a communications link with one of the intact bases on Mars. Admiral Raen has sent a message.”
sixteen
Route it to me,” Jonathan said.
“All right,” Robert replied. “But apparently, because of the limited bandwidth provided by the repeaters, the admiral was only able to send a voice message.”
Jonathan frowned. He disliked voice-only communications, to say the least.
How can we be sure it’s really him? And that he’s not under duress?
Then again, holographic mode could hide the condition of the speaker just as easily, thanks to the massive computing power found aboard starships and bases.
“USS Callaway, this is Admiral Bhadger Raen, Mars base Triton.” The voice matched that of the admiral Jonathan knew. “Captain Dallas, I’ve received the ping from your comm officer. We’ve watched your fleet enter the system and engage the enemy. But you’ll forgive me if I’m a little distrustful of the source of this communication, as these are trying times. So I’ll need you to tell me something to prove you are who you say you are. Do you remember what you told me when you served under me aboard the Dryad? That time we caught specialist Merino producing moonshine with a distillery he had rigged up in engineering?”
Jonathan smiled slightly. He waited in case the admiral said more, but that seemed to be the end of the message.
“Maxwell,” Jonathan said. “Transmit: it’s good to hear your voice, Admiral. In answer to your question, I believe my words were, ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’ Or something to that effect. Once you’ve confirmed I am who I say I am, I’ll need you to do the same for me. When your daughter was born, what was the first thing you told me? Also, what the hell are you doing on Mars?” The admiral had been billeted at the military base near Rius in Beta Ursae Majoris the last time Jonathan had spoken to him.
“Transmitting message,” Maxwell said.
Jonathan sat back, folding his arms on his chest. Given the current location of Mars from the Earth’s moon, it would take about sixteen minutes for the message to reach the planet, and another sixteen for the response to arrive.
Half an hour later Jonathan received the reply. “Exactly right. As for the answer to your first question, when my daughter was born, I said: ‘Man, I really have to get out of the navy. I’m watching my life pass by.’ Too bad I never was one to listen to my own advice.”
That was correct. Jonathan exhaled in relief.
“And as for why I’m on Mars,” Raen continued. “I had to return here to attend to a personal matter involving my daughter Bria. Unfortunately, the Elder decided to visit our lovely system while I was moon-side. When that twisted strip of metal first emerged from Sol Gate 1 it refused all communications and proceeded directly toward Earth. When our forces attacked, they released their nanobot weapon. Those who couldn’t self-destruct in time transformed into the craft you’ve seen out there, turning against us.
“The transformed ships moved from planet to planet, destroying everything that we sent against them, clearing out the remaining vessels from the system. They destroyed the Gates, too, with some of the transformed craft passing through into the adjacent systems. Eventually, when the last of our starships were gone or transformed, the vessels lost interest in the remaining colonies and journeyed to Earth. When they had all gathered in orbit, the Elder vessel unleashed that beam onto the planet.”
“What have we discovered about that weapon?” Jonathan sent. “Do we know what it’s doing to Earth? Also, please tell me the United Systems has a battle force hidden somewhere in the syst
em.”
As he waited the prerequisite thirty minutes for the reply, he had a sudden worry that the Elder might be listening in, and almost took the question back. But he realized the possibility was extremely unlikely. First, the Elder would have had to reverse engineer the data format used by the human comm systems—the packet protocol, the compression, etc; a concept likely just as alien to the Elder as the gamma ray communication scheme was to the humans.
If the Elder could get past that first hurdle, they’d have to break the encryption—basically impossible, unless they somehow got their hands on the necessary digital keys. And finally, even if they did that, there was the small matter of the human language and their inability to understand it. No matter how advanced a race you were, achieving language comprehension of another species took a very long time. Wethersfield had been working on documenting the Raakarr language for the past two years, for example, and the Artificial still hadn’t achieved an automated translation solution.
There was, however, the small issue of telepathy that concerned Jonathan. He remembered the vision the Elder eggs had sent into his head. Could they read images from his mind in addition to sending them? Perhaps from his memories? Maybe, but he believed they could do so only in close proximity, similar to the Raakarr. Even so, it was probably a good idea to start up his psi defense training once again.
Raen’s answer finally came: “A battle force hidden in the system? No such luck. The Elder were very thorough in their cleansing efforts, unfortunately. As for their weapon: according to remote scans its some kind of graviton beam. It’s penetrating deep into the mantle. They’re definitely doing something to our core. Over the past three and a half months since their arrival, the magnetosphere of the Earth has been shifting... actually, degrading is a better term. And from what we can tell, the tectonic plates are moving daily. I can only imagine what it’s like on the surface. The earthquakes and tsunamis must be extreme. But the interference has prevented any of the usual broadcasts from getting out, so we have no idea really of the extent of the damage. I’m just glad Bria accepted this Mars posting.
“Anyway, our best guess, given the changes we’re seeing, is that the internal temperature of the Earth is rising. I tried to smuggle in an investigative unit to find out more. Unfortunately when the shuttle reached Earth’s orbit one of the scavengers shot it down. I know what your next question is going to be. How long does the Earth have? Given the current rate of degradation, in about two weeks the magnetosphere won’t provide any defense against cosmic rays. Even if the Earth’s governments could somehow launch magnetosphere-boosting satellites past the trigger-happy scavengers, there wouldn’t be enough to prevent the total collapse of the magnetic field. In three weeks time, the magnetosphere will be so weak it won’t protect from the sun’s plasma itself. The atmosphere will be ripped clean away.”
“It’s their equivalent of a planet killer.” Jonathan sat back, stunned. “The Elder are judging our whole race based upon the actions of a few.”
“I assume, due to the lack of any other crew in your compartment, that you are addressing me,” Maxwell said.
“What we did to the Elk homeworld is inexcusable,” Jonathan continued. “Even if Zarafe treachery played a part. And so now the Elder have come to fulfill their promise. We have failed their test. Once more the Zarafe emerge as the ultimate victors. Maybe this was their endgame. The destruction of Earth.”
“The Zarafe were acting in their own self interest, yes, by destroying the Elk homeworld,” the Callaway’s AI said. “But the Zarafe could not know the Elder would come. The Zarafe merely got lucky in that regard.”
“Are you certain they didn’t know?” Jonathan said. “One of them telepathically linked with Barrick. He claims it used him to play back thousands of humanity’s different futures. All of those futures ended in this. The Zarafe knew.”
“As I understood it, the Raakarr that linked with him died aboard the Callaway before it could reveal what it had learned to its race,” Maxwell said.
“True enough,” Jonathan said. “Then again, we don’t really know what Barrick has revealed to them.”
“No, I suppose we don’t at that,” the Callaway’s AI agreed.
“Begin recording, Maxwell,” Jonathan said. “Here’s something I want to run by you, Admiral: what are your thoughts on why the aliens didn’t send more ships to pursue us? It feels like they’ve been herding us since Prius 3. The scavengers, or ‘transformed ships’ as you call them, always chased us toward the only intact Gates in the systems, and never pursued. And then when we arrived here, they ignored us until we made a pass at the mothership, and now that we’ve hidden behind the moon, they’ve left us alone again. It’s like they want us to be here, those who destroyed the Elk homeworld. Like they want us to witness the destruction of our own world as punishment.”
“I don’t know,” Raen responded thirty minutes later. “It could very well be what you say. But another possible reason why the local ‘scavengers’ aren’t breaking orbit to pursue you is that we’ve detected gravity wave exchanges between them and the Elder ship. My guess is the scavengers are contributing in some way to the main energy beam. If too many leave orbit the mothership might not have enough energy to keep the beam active. That’s why most of them are congregated on the one hemisphere, keeping near the Elder. They do however keep a few patrol ships separate from the rest, orbiting the Earth, ready to destroy any escape vessels that attempt to leave the planet.
“Earlier, you asked if there was some battle force hidden in the system. While there is not, don’t give up all hope. Reinforcements may yet arrive from unexpected allies. You see, before Sol Gate 2 fell, we dispatched a small flotilla of our fastest ships into Sino-Korean space to personally request aid. Unfortunately, sixteen of the scavengers destroyed the Gate and followed them through the Slipstream. It’s my belief the flotilla survived, and made it to Alpha Centauri.” The seat of the Sino-Korean government resided in Alpha Centauri. “Because only two days ago, we had visual confirmation of two telemetry drones emerging from Lǚxíng.” That was the name of the Slipstream associated with the lost Sol Gate 2. “They have to be part of an advance scouting force. Sure, the SKs have always treated their territory on Earth as a mere galactic province, but let’s just say they have a vested interest in saving the planet, especially considering they have nine billion citizens living there.”
Jonathan sent one final message in reply. “Thank you, admiral. You bring me hope. I will look to Lǚxíng for the arrival of the Sino-Korean fleet in the days to come. And if they do not arrive in time, we’ll have to act on our own. We only have two weeks until our planet is lost. It’s far too little time, but we’ll make do. We’ll have to. I’ll contact you if I need anything further. Good luck, Admiral, and good luck to us all. Captain out.”
seventeen
Jonathan shared what he had learned from the admiral in a conference of the captains, and when that was done, he held another meeting with his department heads so that they were kept in the loop. Finally, he made an announcement to his crew, once more asking them to remain steadfast in the face of darkness. He had Ensign Lewis send him a final tally of the lifepods that had made it to the moon to rejoin the fleet. She reported that there were only twenty-two.
Connie reported in later that day. Jonathan had instructed the chief scientist to study the archives for clues explaining the surprising resilience of the Elder hull. She had accessed the analyses made by xeno scientists of the ancient Elder wreckages discovered in this region of space, but the compositions were not overly dissimilar from the hulls of human or Raakarr vessels, and certainly didn’t explain the added toughness. Connie theorized the ancient hulls must have been reinforced with some kind of material that had degraded over the hundreds of thousands of years since the vessels had crashed.
“Either that,” she said. “Or its possible specialized nanobots swarm the surface and are somehow redirecting the energy of everything we throw at them
, even nuclear. But they’re not invulnerable. We’ve done some damage with our nukes, although admittedly very small. If we could increase the yield a hundredfold somehow we would definitely hurt them, if not destroy them outright.”
“A hundredfold?” Jonathan said. “That’ll be tricky.”
“Yes,” the chief scientist replied. “Even if we combined our nukes it wouldn’t be enough of a yield.”
“So basically you’re saying we need planet killers,” Jonathan said.
“Basically,” Connie said.
Too bad we don’t have any.
Early the next morning he received a call from the chief weapons engineer of the Callaway.
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Jonathan asked.
Harv Boroker had tapped in via full hologram mode so that it looked like he was seated across from the captain. “Not too much. I’ve been pouring through the logs of our battle with the Elder. Specifically, the final logs transmitted by the Leger before the ship transformed. A valiant scientist named Teresa Manuel kept broadcasting from her lab until the very end. Because of the data she gave her life to collect, I’ve made a little discovery that you might find interesting regarding the Elder nanobot weapon.”
“I’m listening,” Jonathan said.
“The weapon fires a beam of concentrated nanobots, right?” Harv said. “Now, each individual nanobot is small enough that it can be considered a particle. So. While composed of nanobots, the beam is, at its core, just a particle beam. As you know, I’ve come up with a defense against particle beams, at least those produced by the Raakarr.”
“You’re talking the charged fields we’ve installed in Avengers and Dragonflies fleet-wide?”
“The very same,” the lieutenant said. “With some modifications, I believe I can tweak those charged fields to protect the Avengers and Dragonflies against the nanobot beam instead. It’ll require cutting the power output of the fighters and shuttles by about forty percent, however.”
